Oh. It’s January 28th. Well, okay.

This month has flown by, and it’s not just because I’ve been working 13-hour days. Something’s been in the air this January, and I’ve had comically bad luck. Truly. If I believed in astrology, I’d find some stars to blame right about now, but I don’t, so I won’t. I won’t get into the specifics here—because, let’s be real, neither of us needs that—but I feel like I’ve spent the entire month just trying to keep my boat from sinking.

That said, I think the holes are patched now, so I’m here. I haven’t forgotten my promises from way back in May. “The Devil’s Road Trip” series is coming—it’s taken on a life of its own and is therefore taking more time, but the first post is almost ready—and I’ll also be posting the obligatory new-year update on my writing (What? It’s still January).

In the meantime, though, I wanted to share something I’ve been working on in one of my day jobs: verb mad libs. As a writing activity for my students, I wrote a story without verbs, leaving blanks for them to fill in on their own.

But this wasn’t just any fill-in-the-blank-with-the-correct-answer activity. There were no “correct” answers because I wrote the story entirely without verbs in the first place. Each blank could be filled by many different verbs, which gave students the opportunity to make the story their own while also practicing past-tense verbs (because, okay, fine, that was the objective).

And, let me tell you, the end results were amusing, to say the least.

The reason I bring this up is because the creation of this activity for my students doubled as a writing challenge for myself as an aspiring writer. Writing a story entirely without verbs is tough, and it really brings to the forefront just how crucial and impactful verbs are.

Try it out, and let me know how it goes for you. It’s cool to see how many different stories you can get just by swapping out verbs.